Congratulations on joining the ControlUp family!

In the following article, we'll explain how to activate the ControlUp license that you just purchased. We have three deployments types for ControlUp. Online, Offline & On-Premises - each one will be specified & explained.

When your purchase is done, you'll get an activation code via email from your sales representative and it will include your license type, activation code, transaction ID etc.

The activation code will be in a form of a UUID constructed from 36 characters (incl. the minus signs) e.g.: 4a7b1234-a981-2b5a-a311-9995581dff28

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Cloud Deployment

1. Please log into your ControlUp Console, in the upper ribbon pane, please go into 'Help' > 'About' and then select 'Licensing' and then you'll be presented with the main licensing page:

3. Insert the activation code that you've received and click "Activate Online"

Your license is now activated. When going back to the main licensing page, you should see all the details updated.

NOTE: if the "I have already purchased ControlUp" button is grayed out, it means that you're on On-Premises deployment. Follow the instructions in the section below.

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On-Premises Deployment

In On-Premises environments, the license will also be created by the Support dept. Please email us at support@controlup.com with following details -

A ControlUp Server License Request xml file.

The file can be generated by the On-Premises installer.

fill in all the details as in the image below and save the request file.

The Activation code that you got from your sales representative.

If you just renewed your license, please log into the ControlUp Server and go to: "C:\Program Files\Smart-X\ControlUp Server\Server Settings\ControlUpServerSettings.xml" and see the license path at row 13.

Please send us the license file listed along with the activation code and we'll issue you the new license.

If you have any further question regarding licensing - feel free to address us at support@controlup.com

The first step you need to take to unleash the full power of ControlUp, is to download the ControlUp Real Time Console from our website, and then create your User Account. For licensing and authentication purposes, you have to have a ControlUp user account. If you are not the first user in your organization that uses ControlUp, just signup and login to the ControlUp organization the first user has created. Below is a quick video to assist you in this process. But it really is as easy as filling in your email, name, phone number and password:

Below is a short video and a few screenshots to help you create a user account:

The second step in getting started is organizing your monitored resources, which are presented by your folder hierarchy. You can easily start by creating a few basic folders to manage your environment. Later on, you will add computers within these folders. But hey – wait a minute – that's the next step. Before you get there, watch this quick video to learn how to create folders.

The following is a video and a screenshot to help you get started in creating folders:

You made it, this is step three in the process of getting started. You will now need to add the resources you'd like to monitor in order to actually get performance metrics. These include servers, desktops and hypervisors (we’ll get to that in the next step).

In this step you will see how to add hypervisors in order to get a deeper view of your environment.

Important Note:

If multiple colleagues are using ControlUp in your environment, please ensure each of them uses the same credentials for the hypervisor connection/s you create. Once a hypervisor connection is configured, ControlUp expects to find an identical set of credentials on all machines on which an instance of the Console or Monitor is used. This behavior is intended to ensure that only authorized users have access to hypervisor-related information and management actions. Therefore, it is recommended that you use a dedicated service account to connect ControlUp to your virtualization infrastructure.

The video below features a quick tutorial on how to add hypervisors to the ControlUp Real-time console:

Version 7.1 of ControlUp significantly improves XenDesktop monitoring functionality by adding a data collector component which gathers operational metadata directly from XenDesktop API. This allows ControlUp to display real-time XenDesktop-specific information, such as VDA registration status, brokering performance in the console and send it to ControlUp Insights for historical analysis and reporting.

By adding a XenDesktop connection to ControlUp, you will benefit from the following features:

ControlUp will automatically discover VDAs, delivery groups and brokers associated with your XenDesktop deployment. VDAs and brokers will appear on the Computers view and XenDesktop sessions will appear on the Sessions view. Note that with XenDesktop integration, ControlUp Agent deployment is not required for this discovery process.

Note: ControlUp Agent is required in order to monitor the performance of your VDAs and brokers, and in order to display processes running on your VDAs and brokers

Note: each session discovered by the XenDesktop connection is counted as 1 ControlUp license

The XenDesktop site will appear in the organization tree under “XenDesktop Sites”. The site itself, its delivery groups and the “Brokers” container will be displayed as folders as long as the XenDesktop connection is active. You can use the Focus action on these folders in order to filter the information grid to display VDAs or sessions in a specific delivery group, or to examine the health of your XenDesktop brokers.

Note: the child folders of the XenDesktop connection in the organization tree (delivery groups and the Brokers container) are ephemeral objects which are not stored in ControlUp’s configuration. As such, they cannot be used to configure custom stress settings, incident triggers or column presets. In order to save custom settings for delivery groups or brokers, please add the corresponding computers to the organizational tree using the Add Computers button.

Resources displayed in ControlUp will be enriched with dozens of XenDesktop-related metrics and operational metadata. For example, the Computers view will show the “XD Computer Availability” column which will show “Available” for any VDAs which should be accessible by users, and the Sessions view will show the “XD Launched via HostName” column which will contain the name of the StoreFront server used to launch each session.

Note: for the full list of metrics and metadata retrieved from the XenDesktop infrastructure, please refer to the Computers and Sessions column reference. For your convenience, all XenDesktop column names are prefixed with “XD ”

Adding a XenDesktop connection

In order to connect ControlUp to your XenDesktop deployment, you will need to create a XenDesktop site connection in ControlUp Console. The connection will define the address/es of the broker/s from which data will be gathered and the credentials used for data collection and management actions. The following are mandatory prerequisites for adding a XenDesktop connection:

XenDesktop 7.5 or later

XenDesktop PowerShell SDK installed on all computers running ControlUp Console and Monitor, as well as any computers configured as dedicated data collectors

Note: It is recommended to designate at least one computer on your network as a designated collector for XenDesktop data, especially in environments in which multiple instances of ControlUp are being used concurrently. For more information on configuring dedicated data collectors for XenDesktop, see below.

To add a XenDesktop site connection, click on the Add XenDesktop button on the Home ribbon or right-click the root folder of your organization tree and select Add > XenDesktop Site. The Add XenDesktop Site Connection dialog box will be presented.

The following details are required:

Broker name / IP - enter the full name (FQDN), hostname or IP address of a broker in your XenDesktop site

Credentials - use the drop-down to select or add a set of credentials which will be used for data collection from your XenDesktop infrastructure.

In version 7.1 we've introduced the Shared Credentials Store used via the Monitor.

Note: For more information on configuring ControlUp Monitor for XenDesktop monitoring see below

Once ControlUp establishes a connection with your XenDesktop site, it will automatically populate the Site Name field with the site’s name and the Brokers Failover List tab with the names of all the broker servers assigned to the XenDesktop site.

Note: For more information on optimizing the performance of XenDesktop data collection, see below

Configuring ControlUp Monitor for XenDesktop

After creating a XenDesktop connection, all ControlUp Monitor instances in your organization will start connecting to the site and retrieving data. In order to avoid conflicts between data collected from different sources, all ControlUp instances in your network are required to use the same credentials for XenDesktop data collection. It is therefore recommended that you create a service account with adequate permissions for your XenDesktop site and save its credentials with all ControlUp instances on your network.

In order to ensure that the monitor is able to collect data from the XenDesktop site, you need to ensure all monitor instances have the credentials you selected when creating the connection.

To ensure that, please perform the following steps for each installed monitor instance:

Open the XenDesktop connection settings dialog by right-clicking the site connection in the folder tree and clicking Connection Settings.

Note the username configured for XenDesktop data collection.

Double-click a ControlUp monitor instance in the area below the organization tree.

Click the Monitored Resources tab and locate the Name of your XenDesktop site. If its status is Connected, your monitor is communicating with the XenDesktop site. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

Click Settings… to open ControlUp Monitor configuration wizard

Click Add Credentials Set… and provide the username, password and domain for the user account recorded in step 2 above.

Optimizing XenDesktop Data Collector Performance

The following step is optional, but strongly recommended in order to ensure optimal performance of the XenDesktop connection.

By default, when you create a XenDesktop connection in ControlUp, all consoles and monitor instances in your organization will start connecting to it automatically in order to collect information. This may create unnecessary performance overhead, especially if multiple instances of ControlUp Console and Monitor are used in your network. It is a best practice to designate one or more computers in your ControlUp organization to act as dedicated collectors for XenDesktop data.

To configure dedicated data collectors, open the XenDesktop site connection settings dialog, expand the Data collectors panel and click the Add.. button to select a computer in your ControlUp organization to add as a dedicated data collector for XenDesktop. The following guidelines will help you select an optimal data collector:

1GB of available RAM

Uninterrupted connectivity to the XenDesktop site

Always on (except for planned maintenance / reboot windows)

We added the option to view new entities in the console - XenDesktop Site, Brokers and Delivery Groups.

Focusing on each of the new entities shows the relevant new metrics pooled from the XD connection in the regular folder, computer and sessions views.

This enabled us to also add a drilldown from unmanaged XD VDAs to their sessions.

In case one of the brokers or VDA machines have an agent deployed - the console will show all available metrics both from the XD site connection and the agent.

We added the ability to calculate the health of each broker in the XenDesktop site.

The health column calculation is based on a list of services, databases and hypervisors, and in case all services are available and running, all databases can be reached and all hypervisors are available, the broker’s health is 100%. In case one of the parameters is not ok, it affects the broker’s health by a few percents.

Each of the parameters that the calculation is based on can be excluded from the registry (by default the % hypervisors available is excluded).

The Site itself shows an aggregated calculation of what % of brokers are 100% healthy.

By using ControlUp’s AWS EC2 cloud management all the instances are visible in the same place, their performance metrics and cost metrics are displayed with a great level of granularity, all live and in real time. If resources are strained, they’re shown in flashing red. If any aspect of the cost shoots up, so will the red flags.

Adding an EC2 instance to ControlUp is as easy as adding a cloud connection from within the console, simply provide your AWS EC2 credentials (which can be read only) and within seconds the ControlUp console will populate with live performance and cost metrics.

The permissions required to retrieve the data from AWS, are (as defined in the IAM User):

Note: The following Jason is good for retrieving data but not for taking action as: Stop, Start an Instance, and Take a Screenshot.

In this step of the Getting Started tutorial, you will see how to add a monitor to your ControlUp setup. Surely you are wondering – what is a monitor...? So we’ll tell you.

A monitor is a Windows service requiring no user interaction, which allows for continuous monitoring of your resources. It is recommended to run the ControlUp Real Time Console and the ControlUp Monitor on two separate servers. By adding a monitor you will benefit from the ControlUp Insights historical reporting module (learn how to login to ControlUp Insights in the next step).

You made it – ControlUp Insights is now available and ready for your use. Historical reporting is finally at your fingertips, just log into ControlUp Insights, it really is that easy! Once in the ControlUp Insights portal you will have access to a plethora of reports. Check the health of your VDI environment by identifying the source of existing disruptions and getting ahead of emerging ones. You won’t want to miss this video.

Here we will walk you through defining incident triggers. Don’t skip this step, as it will enable you to get alerts for any abnormal incidents which may happen in your environment. You will want to be notified immediately when things go wrong – so you can stay on top of things even when you are not in the office. Watch the video below to learn how to easily define these incident triggers:

In this step we will explain how to use controllers within the console. Controllers enable you to compare file systems, programs and updates, registry and services following an end-user complaint. Resolve issues with simple right click management actions.

The following is a video and few screenshots to help you manage your environment through the ControlUp Real-time controllers:

This is the last and final step in getting started. In this step you will learn how to delegate permissions within ControlUp. Allow your colleagues access to specific actions according to your needs, roles and preferences.

The following is a video and few screenshots to help you set up your security policy, learn best practices for user delegation and delegate permissions within ControlUp:

In addition you can lock the Console UI with Group Policy, here is an article how you can achieve that - Locking UI with GPO

Check for Updates

Checks whether an updated build of ControlUp is available for download.

Report Bug

Please take a minute to report the issue to our development team should you encounter any unexpected behavior using ControlUp. To do this, use the “Report Bug” option. Feel free to describe the issue in maximal detail and attach any relevant data for us to review. Your report, which you can also send anonymously, will be investigated and processed thoroughly by our engineers.

Note: In order to make your request easier to process, take a screenshot of the condition you would like to report. Click on the Attachments area of the “Report Bug” window and paste the screenshot directly by pressing Ctrl+V or by right-clicking and selecting “Paste.”

Feature Request

Most of ControlUp’s features were developed as a result of requests from experienced systems administrators and other IT professionals. If you feel that ControlUp can benefit from any kind of additional functionality, please feel free to request your desired features and we shall consider including them in our future releases. Make sure to provide a clear and detailed description of your requested feature and attach any relevant data when submitting the report.

Ask the Support Team

Should you have any queries regarding ControlUp, this form allows you to submit them along with any relevant information.